MHS Play Production after their semi-final win. Photo by Miranda Libkin./
The Malden High School Play Production performed in the Drama Festival Preliminaries run by the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild (METG) and has made it into the Semi-finals along with Wakefield and Leominster High School.
The METG drama festival is where 110-115 different schools in the state compete at several different sites over the course of two weeks (preliminaries and semi-finals) to make it to make it to the final round of competition in Boston. Each school presents a one act play that has to be 40 minutes in length with a setup and breakup time of less than five minutes. Many schools often perform plays by professional playwrights.
The MHS students performed a play titled “Umbrella: An Exhibition”, which the students wrote on their own. It is about a series of exhibits/scenes that looks at family from very different angles such as immigrant families,absentee parents,family relationships and friendship over time. An umbrella is used as a metaphor in each scene throughout the play.
At the preliminaries, MHS students earned several awards. Senior Senior Sam Martinez won for Lighting, seniors Marcelo Junior Silva, Ruthie Bilimo, Brian Tran Le, and Andre Bronco Camara won for set design, sophomore Rodneisha Normill, juniors Kristel Normil, Leticia Sidney, Dexter Haag, and senior Ariana Teixiera won for Live musical performance. For live musical performance, juniors Michelle Chan, Q. Nguyen and Seniors Harrison Zeiberg and Ramon Aguinado received awards.
Malden High School performed along with Wakefield, Narragansett Regional, Malden Catholic, Nashoba Tech, Leominster, and St. Mary’s High School, only Malden, Leominster and Wakefield made it into the semi-finals.
Miranda Libkin, one of Malden High School’s drama co-directors, described the play as “magnificent to watch”. She was “impressed by the fact that the students performed this play so well, considering that it was their first time performing this play” and it “was in front of a large audience at a competition”.
Sean Walsh, one of Malden High School’s Drama co-directors, felt that the Drama Festival “was a welcoming event”. He “was impressed by the [students] with their professionalism, spirit” and work and thought they “got to see interesting pieces of theatre from other schools across the state”.
At the semi-finals, MHS will be performing at Marshfield High School along with St. John’s Prep School Xaverian, Rockland, Mansfield, Nauset Regional, and Marshfield High School.
If you are interested in seeing Play Production’s performance, they will be performing Umbrella: An Exhibition on March 15, 6:30pm in the MHS Jenkins Auditorium.
In an earlier version of this article, Miranda Libkin’s last name was spelled incorrectly.
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